I've discovered there are three things you need for a good night's sleep at anchor:  Faith in your hook, a skipper who'll do anchor watch whilst you're snoring, and enough co-codamol to floor a small donkey (my back's still not good).

Dinner last night was superb, even though I say so myself.  We shared the tuna, and there turned out to be plenty, which I served on a bed of soy stir-fried vegetables and noodles.  Very tasty, very healthy and very cheap!  We sat in the cockpit afterwards, with the boat bobbing up and down - which was a pleasant change from the side to side movement of the marina - admiring the pretty town surrounded by huge craggy mountains.  It looks prettier at night because the dark volcanic sand on the beach looks a bit mucky in the daytime.  The row of streetlights along the shore cast lines of light over the water towards our boat and there was a full moon illuminating the headland and throwing a sparkling pathway out to sea.  Amazing.  During the time we sat there the boat didn't move at all, apart from round in a big arc as the wind shifted, which was handy as the view kept changing without having to move your head.

People were swimming in the sea before we left this morning, and it's been a very, very hot day, with hardly a breath of wind and mirror calm water.  But we only got as far as dangling our feet off the bathing platform after arriving here at Puertitio de la Luz.  We passed many resorts on the way down the east coast of Fuerteventura, backed by dramatic volcanic mountains - it was truly stunning.  We struggled to get the anchor to catch when we arrived, it's a sandy / rocky bed and it took a while to find a good patch of sand, but the water's so clear you can see what's beneath you.  That's a bit scary 'cos the bottom looks so close, so I made Chris check our depth sounder with a plumb-line off the boat.  It's accurate, erring on conservative and Chris now says he's definitely been to Fuerteventura 'cos he's touched the bottom, albeit via a rope.  I'll give him that one.

We've encountered some lovely marine life on the way here - unfortunately none of which has landed on our dinner plate so we've had to make do with pasta carbonara for dinner.  I saw something skim quickly just above the surface of the water this morning; too small to be a bird I thought, but too large to be a dragon-fly, which it looked like from a distance.  I saw another later, which I thought had dived to catch some food but it was a long way away.  Chris was around later when I pointed out the third - it was a flying fish!  I've heard of them, and have read of boats finding them floundering on deck, but I presumed they kind of jumped up out of the water.  No, their fins flap like a humming-bird and they actually fly!

Something big and dark surfaced when I was keeping my eye out for a fish-farm marker, and I thought I'd seen my first whale.  It reappeared seconds later with a few friends and I realised it was 'only' a dolphin.  Nothing 'only' about dolphins, they love to play around a boat's bow wave and wake, and it's almost as if they're there to protect you.  They didn't stay long (probably looking for some flying fish for dinner) but the reassurance was there, they're the sailors' friends - but not edible, or too friendly and cute to eat if they were.